The phone’s persistent ring interrupted our early morning sleep. It was my son, Thom, sounding uncharacteristically abrupt. “Dad, turn on your TV, now.”

That was September 11th, 22 years ago. My wife and I are both native New Yorkers but were then living in California. We flipped on the bedroom TV and were immediately wide awake, transfixed by the live broadcast of the hellscape in the city we knew so well. As we watched, the two World Trade Center towers burned, then collapsed.

The scene was both starkly real and at the same time unbelievable. It dawned on us that we were witnessing something that we never expected to see and did not want to see — a large-scale terrorist attack on our soil, oceans away (we thought) from the world’s trouble spots.

That evening, we witnessed another, wholly unexpected dimension of the sudden, unwanted new reality. At a hastily arranged service at our local Catholic Church in Half Moon Bay, parishioners somberly mourned the loss of thousands of Americans, but other attendees pushed back, opining that our nation’s actions had obviously provoked the attack.

OK, this was California — but how could anyone not discern unspeakable, intolerable, unforgivable evil that we’d all just witnessed?

It turned out that they weren’t the only ones holding that view. Later that week, we watched the chilling video of Howard University students cheering when the towers came tumbling down.

Sadly, world events continue to reveal both the barbarity of terrorism and society’s tangled ambivalence about it. In the intervening years since 9/11, there have been repeated episodes of comparable barbarity, eliciting similarly tangled reaction.

Via modern-day mass media capability, we’ve watched ISIS zealots enthusiastically behead other human beings — those whose offense was disagreement with their killers’ religious beliefs. Civilized nations managed to quell that trend, but terrorism still thrives. Suicide bombings in crowded public settings are a far-too-frequent tactic.

Russia’s attack on neighboring Ukraine, while technically an act of war, was — and is — terrorism. What else do you call firing missiles into apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and caravans of refugees? When that war erupted, most international spectators were aghast. But after two years, we’re just tired of it — the wholesale brutality continues, but it no longer garners front-page attention, and many Americans are no longer sure that we should continue to provide Ukraine with the funds and weapons needed to resist the onslaught.

And now we’re faced with the horror show of Hamas’s attack on Israel: the specter of a large-scale, well-planned and organized, state-sponsored terrorist attack on unsuspecting victims, to be followed by certain Israeli counterattacks with potentially greater numbers of innocent victims and the very real possibility of escalation and engagement of other combatants.

Imagination can take us only so far. Can Americans who watch these unfolding terrorist events from our safe, comfortable homes even begin to internalize the stark terror of Israelis huddled in their homes as bands of invaders swarm through their neighborhood, breaking down doors in search of victims to shoot, rape, torture, or kidnap?

We vowed never to forget 9/11, but we have not kept that memory close enough to sufficiently influence our nation’s politics and policies. This time, while the Hamas attack on Israel is still front and center, let’s take to heart, once and for all, a few crystal-clear perspectives:

1. Our world is now very small. There’s no such thing as being far enough or safe enough from terrorist attack.

2. Peace is not just the absence of active warfare. Our foreign policy objective must not be simply to cajole the combatants into stopping the fight; it must be to eliminate terrorists’ capability to press the attack.

3. Open borders will ultimately have disastrous consequences. We cannot protect ourselves from those who seek to destroy or displace us — whether for reasons of ideology, political differences, or just envy — without rigorous, constant control of our borders. And don’t lose sight of the reality that some of them are already here.

4. Robust national defense is imperative. While we wrestle with the world’s current dilemmas, our potential adversaries are watching and waiting.

5. Much of our political leadership, including elected officials and those who want to be elected officials, seems blissfully unaware of the chaos around us. As of this writing, the congressional GOP majority is leaderless — for no good reason — unable to answer the bell. With a presidential election only 13 months away, both political parties currently seem intent on advancing demonstrably unfit candidates.

In this dangerous world, our very survival hinges on competent leadership. I urge every American voter to look beyond media hype and partisan instincts and consider just one factor in choosing the next American president: Who can navigate our nation through the minefield ahead? Make up your own mind, communicate your views far and wide, and vote accordingly.